The present invention relates to gold wires for use in semiconductor packaging and high-frequency signal transmission. A gold wire according to the present invention comprises a non-pure gold core member obtained from oxygen free copper, pure silver, or pure palladium, and a layer of pure gold coating covering the non-pure gold core member. The invention relates also to the fabrication of the gold wire.
The gold wires for use in semiconductor packaging are commonly fabricated from pure gold. Because pure gold is expensive, the manufacturing cost of gold wires for this purpose is high.
The present invention has been accomplished under the circumstances in view. It is one object of the present invention to provide a gold wire, which is suitable for use in semiconductor packaging and high-frequency signal transmission. It is another object of the present invention to provide a gold wire for semiconductor packaging and high-frequency signal transmission, which is inexpensive to manufacture. According to one aspect of the present invention, the gold wire comprises a non-pure gold core member obtained from oxygen free copper, pure silver, or pure palladium, and a layer of pure gold coating covering the non-pure gold core member. According to another aspect of the present invention, the gold wire fabrication method includes the procedures of (1) selecting a non-pure gold wire rod, (2) gold-plating the non-pure gold wire rod with a layer of pure gold coating of thickness about 10xcx9c100 xcexcin, (3) drawing the pure gold-coated wire rod into a cold wire of thickness about 40xcx9c4000 xcexcin, (4) examining the material properties of the gold wire so as to obtained the desired finished product.